“My memory is fine,” a defiant Biden declares after the special counsel's report

President Biden angrily hit back at a special counsel's report on his handling of classified documents on Thursday, denying that he deliberately withheld papers he wasn't supposed to keep and insisting that “my memory is fine” despite questions from prosecutors.

In a hastily arranged late-night television appearance at the White House, the defiant Mr. Biden offered a spirited defense of his actions and his ability to run the country, an effort to allay concerns that could harm his re-election chances at a time when Out Polls show that most voters already think he is too old. The report called him a “well-meaning, older man with a poor memory,” a phrase that clearly got under the president's skin.

“I mean well, and I'm an older man, and I know what the hell I'm doing,” Mr. Biden told a Fox News reporter who asked him about the report after his statement. “My memory is so bad I let you finish.”

Mr. Biden was particularly irritated that the special counsel indicated that the president could not remember the year his eldest son, Beau, died of cancer, a particularly sensitive subject for him. “How on earth does he dare bring that up?” Mr. Biden said emotionally.

But even as he sought to debunk suggestions that he might not be suitable for the job, he confounded the presidents of Mexico and Egypt in response to a question about negotiations for the release of hostages held by Hamas, precisely kind of mistake that his staff probably made. I hoped he would avoid this at a time when his mental acuity is being questioned.

“I believe, as you know, that the response in Gaza, in the Gaza Strip, has been overblown,” Mr. Biden said. “I think that, as you know, the president of Mexico, el-Sisi, initially did not want to open the gate to let in humanitarian materials.” He was apparently referring to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the president of Egypt, and not Mexico.

The comments from the White House Diplomatic Reception Room came just hours after the special counsel, Robert K. Hur, cleared him of criminal charges in his handling of classified documents but sharply criticized his behavior and suggested there was one reason why he could not be prosecuted. was because of his memory loss.

In an unflattering report of more than 300 pagesHur said Biden left the White House after his vice presidency with classified documents on Afghanistan and notebooks containing handwritten notes “implying sensitive intelligence sources and methods” from White House briefings. Mr. Hur criticized Mr. Biden for sharing the contents of the notebooks with a ghostwriter who helped him with his 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” even though he knew some of it was secret.

But the evidence “does not establish beyond a reasonable doubt Mr. Biden's guilt,” said Mr. Hur, a former Trump Justice Department official who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in January 2023 to lead the investigation after classified files were found in the garage and living areas of Mr. Biden's home in Delaware and his former office in Washington.

The president and his team welcomed the decision not to pursue criminal charges, but were clearly concerned that the report's description of Mr. Biden's mental capabilities could be damaging. At 81 years old, Biden is already the oldest president in American history and he would be 86 years old at the end of a second term.

Former President Donald J. Trump, who is 77 and has raised questions about his own cognitive health by making confusing statements at public meetings, has been charged with 40 crimes for taking classified documents with him when he left the White House and trying to steal them. hiding from government officials who tried to retrieve them. He complained bitterly on Thursday that Mr Biden had not been charged.

“I did nothing wrong, and I have been much more cooperative,” Trump wrote on social media, making no mention of his refusal to turn over subpoenaed documents and other efforts to thwart investigators. “What Biden did is outrageously criminal.”

In his account of his interviews with the president, Mr. Hur portrayed him as someone who could not remember key dates from his time in President Barack Obama's White House. “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a likable, well-meaning, older man with a bad memory,” Mr. Hur wrote. It would be difficult to persuade a jury to convince that “a former president well into his 80s” was guilty of a crime that “requires a mental state of willfulness,” Mr. Hur added.

Mr. Biden used his late-night appearance to respond directly to the report. He said Mr Hur's conclusion that he “deliberately” withheld documents was “misleading” and “plainly wrong” and denied sharing classified information with his ghostwriter. He said a memo he wrote to Mr. Obama about Afghanistan and shared should have simply been considered “private.”

He said his retention of documents was not comparable to Mr. Trump's conduct. “It wasn't outside like Mar-a-Lago, in a public place,” he said, referring to Trump's estate and private club in Florida. And he blamed his staff for any mistakes in their handling of classified documents, saying: “I take responsibility for not seeing exactly what my staff were doing.”

But most of all, Mr. Biden reacted angrily to questions about his age. “That's your judgement,” he snapped at a reporter. Asked why he should not step aside for a younger successor, Mr. Biden said he was the most qualified person in the country to be president and that he needed to “finish the job I started.”